Maybe, who needs Class II?!

[Lemon Lime]

Hi everyone!



Let me get to this straight and quickly, Class II is useless! I've been in a team who happens to be the so called "biggest FS Team in Egypt"! And we haven't spun a wheel on the track since 2010!



Four freakin' years, entering the competition every year, and no wheel spun! Not even touched the track! Not even proper questions on the forum! No basic knowledge, Just nearly the same design "on papers" every year with the same mistakes!



So, how many teams in Egypt?! A lot! Really ... Like 12 or something! All the same! Each team needs a budget of approx. 500,000 EGP which is about 70,000 USD to manufacture their FSAE racer car "which ends up in Class II". So, about 1,000,000 USD are being spent every year for some people who eventually take selfies at London Eye! And not a single benefit for the sake of our nation!



I don't get any new knowledge, and I'm not going to spend quite a lot of money for a plane ticket to attend a competition which I know and pretty much the whole team knows that we'll get the same last year's result or even less!



Simply, Class II does waste a lot of money for developed countries "tickets, transportation and stay"! And we can say that no benefits at all, we don't even manufacture cars in Egypt! No body benefits!



There should be more constrictions; no class II and please, an online interview for new teams "well, and some not too good teams" before getting in the competition for a pre-evaluation.



FS is about building a broad generation of engineers who would make a real difference in the whole automotive industry, right?!



And, the competition could be a lot better, efficient if 10 or 20 teams less attend it! It's simple, cancel Class II! Any team fails at Class I should be marked so that next time an online interview will be held to decide whether a team should attend or not!



More constrictions means less time wasted, less effort, less "stupid" questions, better community and better benefit for whom who deserve!



It's not about the resources, if we spend 1,000,000 USD on 12 teams, we can spend half of them on two teams who would make the change in the community! That's it! Less money less teams more benefit!



Discussions are welcomed! Seriously ... Like except for those who would say it's a bad idea! REALLY!



Design it, BUILD IT, RACE IT ... FOR GOD'S SAKE ... FOR GOD'S SAKE RACE IT! It's up there, it's the slogan guys!



Egyptians who would disagree can go for the Mini 4WD championship! It's freakn' awesome! Like real awesome! Just Google it! Mini 4WD Japan Cup



All kinds,

Marwan Alabassiry.


Cairo, Egypt.

[Bemo]

Hello Marwan,

I agree with a lot of your observations. The idea behind class 2 was to make it easier to start new teams. But in reality most of the time it is as you describe it. Teams keep stuck in class 2 instead of proceeding to class 1. That's why at Formula Student Germany and Austria (and several others) class 2 doesn't exist.

There are exceptions like the Russian competition which took place for the first time this year. Several teams were started in Russia from scratch and people had never seen an FSAE competition at all. Having class 2 there helped to get the competition to a proper size in the first year.

What would maybe help is to prohibit to take part in class 2 multiple times. It might be helpful one time so the team can get an impression of the competition and some feedback from judges for what they did until then, but in the second year there must be a running car.

About the idea with the interviews with teams I'm not sure wether this is applicable. FSG has already tried to have a process similar. There you have to hand in a video of your driving car a couple of weeks before the competition. But this year this didn't prevent that there were still some very aweful cars which were very far from being in finished condition.

[Luniz]

Hi Marwan,

I really liked the phrase "...for taking selfies at the London Eye..." ;-)

But on a more serious note: Why don't you just jump forward yourself? Enter Class one and build the first real car from your Uni? The first one is probably the hardest, I agree, but someone has to start it, right?

Ditching Class II altogether would not be a good idea I think... Some of the bigger Unis in the UK have two year cycles in their team where they enter class II first and Class I the subsequent year, which kind of makes sense, if the students are willing to stick around the team for two years in a row.

Just my 2ct...

[Meer]

Ditching Class II altogether would not be a good idea I think... Some of the bigger Unis in the UK have two year cycles in their team where they enter class II first and Class I the subsequent year, which kind of makes sense, if the students are willing to stick around the team for two years in a row.

^This.

Also, you do not need 70,000 USD to manufacture an FSAE car.

[Bemo]

Ditching Class II altogether would not be a good idea I think... Some of the bigger Unis in the UK have two year cycles in their team where they enter class II first and Class I the subsequent year, which kind of makes sense, if the students are willing to stick around the team for two years in a row.

Good point. But you could still prohibit to take part in class 2 within two consecutive years to prevent teams to show up year after year and never finishing a car. It is a waste of time for everybody if there is no progress.

[Luniz]

I can't quite remember who it is exactly, but there are a few unis that actually run two teams on a two year cycle besides each other... Bath might be one of them I think.

[Dunk Mckay]

Brunel runs a class 2 team completely separately to it's class 1 team. It's made up of students on the MSc course, only there for one year, which has very different entry requirements than the main BEng/Meng course (I've heard rumours of people getting in on "technicians degrees" from dubious overseas "universities"). Anyhow, being able to give them that to do means the new team managers don't have an unsurmountable number of new inexperienced team members to have to manage. Although it does waste uni budget on crappy materials for crappy cars that never get made, but enough of that.

I agree that class 2 might not serve a huge purpose. But eliminating doesn't either. Having no class 2 won't free up more space for class 1 teams. It's a simple question of track space and time. Other than freeing up more judges and a few volunteers there's little benefit.
It would be good to have some sort of anti-stagnation rule though. For example, you could only enter a class 2 team IF:
-You haven't entered class 2 before.
-You've only entered class 2 once before
-You've entered class 2 more than once before, but not in the last 3 years.
-You've entered class 2 before, but had a class 1 team registered last year or have one registered for the coming year (this allows for teams with both types of two year cycles (whole team or upcoming members).

[Ahmad Rezq]

Welcome my country man,
Yes all the teams in Egypt do nothing rather than traveling to the competition with car pushed by the team members repeating the same process for many years.
new strategy should be developed in order to have teams from Egypt watching their car in the dynamics event.
For sure class 2 is not good for Egyptian teams, and you won't spend 500,000 LE to build a car if you do some engineering, it's really sad to see that Egyptian cars weights without driver are around 280 kg and they are very happy of what they reached. the situation is really sad here in Egypt with all the respect to all people who worked very hard but excuse me they don't do any type of engineering.
Regards

[mech5496]

It mights sound harsh but your inability to move on from class 2 is not a fault of the competition IMO. I know, because we were always a tiny team (8-10 people per year) with small budget, which made things hard as you can imagine. Being small, a 2-year cycle is the only possiblity. I find Class 2 a great way for new inexperienced team members to cut their teeth, gain some valuable experience and even more valuable feedback from the judges; thus when we enter Class 2, every single team member has eyes and ears wide open, trying to absorb as much knowledge and feedback as possible, and transfer it into a competitive car next year. So far, it works great for us!

[Luniz]

Marwan, Ahmad,

what you are doing here is finding false excuses for your lack of performance. Your car isn't good because you couldn't buy that Honda CBR in your country, or because the steel has the wrong spec, or because the competition has a class II or whatever... This is ridiculous! The performance of your cars and teams is at YOUR hands, and no one elses! As long as you fail to accept that, the performance will not increase! Errors are there to be made and to learn from them!

Regards, Luniz